PROBLEMS GETTING A DOCTOR'S APPOINTMENT

Have you ever tried to get an appointment for your gp and you phone at 8am like you are told too and maybe have to dial 50 or 60 times before you get an answer only to be told that there is no appointments but can offer you a call back or an appointment with a nurse practitioner. Sometimes a call back is not appropriate as people work and not allowed there phones on them and nurse practitioners nine times out of ten say you have to come back and see a doctor anyway. Then when you do get a call back they can give you an appointment no bother so why are these not available when you phone first thing, that's if your lucky to get a call back. It does not help that on average a month there over two hundred people miss there appointments and don't cancel them. In my surgery alone in 2014/2015 there was over two and half thousand missed appointments in that year alone and we have three practices in our community practice so times that by three, that is a hell of a lot of appointments missed.

I now feel that it is time for change and something needs to be done about it once and for all. I know the surgeries struggle to keep up with dealing with this problem and they need more powers to act upon it. That can only be done at government level.

I need your support in taken this forward as it is a nationwide problem that needs to be sorted.